Clean Up The Rigged Elections At Home First - Walter Cronkite

[reprehensor]

The recent redistricting of Texas, promoted and directed by Houston's congressman and House Majority Leader Tom DeLay, reminds us that it is not just countries like Zimbabwe, Azerbaijan and Chechnya that rig their elections.

We've been doing it in this country ever since the Founding Fathers sought to assure that each congressional district would represent as nearlyas possible an equal number of citizens. They provided a census, to be taken every 10 years, as the basis on which the districts could be realigned.

Unfortunately, they left to the states how those district lines would be redrawn. The state legislators undertook the task and highly politicized it.

In Massachusetts, prior to the election of 1812, the party in power was facing defeat when the governor, Elbridge Gerry, redrew districts to consolidate his party's strength and weaken that of the opposition. A local newspaper editor thought one tortuously drawn district resembled a salamander and coined the word used ever after to describe the product of partisan redistricting -- a "gerrymander."

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Original:
http://www.harktheherald.com/modules.php?op=modload&name=News&file=article&sid=5354&mode=thread&order=0&thold=0

[Padraig18]

1. Great article!

Thanks for posting it! :hi:

[OneBlueSky]

2. there oughta be a law . . .

that says, when redrawing Congressional districts, said redrawing must conform as closely as possible to existing local political boundries (town lines, village borders, etc.) . . . the gerrymandering that's taking place now borders on the absurd . . .